Dylan Sprouse said a genealogy search on Ancestry led him to a startling conclusion about his family history: He and his twin brother, Cole Sprouse, are “children of incest.”
During Tuesday’s episode of the “Wildmen Podcast,” Dylan explained that he had connected with several relatives he had never previously met, particularly on his father’s side, which he described as deeply fractured. The conversations prompted the family members to compare their histories.
The 34-year-old actor said he discovered that both branches of his family had been living in California during the Gold Rush era in the 1800s. By the close of that century, the two families had become connected through marriage.
“And then, they diverged, and then they married again [through] my mom and my dad, like, last generation,” Dylan said, laughing about the unusual path of his family tree.
Dylan said he immediately called his brother, also 34, to share the “f–king crazy” discovery. Cole, however, apparently wanted no part of the revelation and hung up on him.
The “Riverdale” star said his suspicions first began when he learned that two of his father’s uncles were identical twins.
“I’d only ever thought that identical twins or twins in general came from my mom’s side of the family,” Dylan said. “We had seven sets of twins in four generations. Which is crazy.”
He then realized that the unusually high number of twins could be explained by the two family branches being connected.
Although the “Suite Life of Zack and Cody” actor said the family connection placed him only a few generations removed from incest, he joked that he had not developed any “webbed toes.”
Dylan also shared another bizarre detail that he believes points to a connection between his mother’s and father’s families.
“One of my aunts was a twin, but she was one of the twins who ate her twin in the womb, and when they cut open a cyst in her shoulder, it had teeth and hair,” he said.
“Long story short, Cole and I are children of incest,” Dylan concluded, framing the claim as a darkly comic summary of his genealogy findings.
The Sprouse brothers became household names as child actors, most famously playing Zack and Cody on the hit Disney Channel sitcom “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.”
Dylan recently reached a major milestone of his own when he and his wife, Barbara Palvin, welcomed their first child together. The couple’s daughter, Sylvie, was born last month.
Ahead of Palvin’s appearance in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on Sunday, Dylan said their daughter had already reached several milestones, including recognizing faces.
“She’s smiling and laughing at my jokes,” Dylan told E! News. “Which is all a dad can really dream of.”